Why the study?
Elucidating the specific neurobiological patterns characterizing suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents is needed to inform intervention markers and develop brain-based treatment targets.
What are the distinct resting-state fMRI network coherence patterns characterizing suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents with depression?
What are the distinct resting-state fMRI network coherence patterns characterizing suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents with depression?
Suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-injury in depressed adolescents are related to brain networks associated with difficulties in self-referential processing, while NSSI is specifically related to disruptions in interoceptive awareness.
May aid phenotyping of high-risk depressed adolescents; hypothesis-generating and should not yet change practice.
Suicidal ideation (SI) and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) are two distinct yet often co-occurring risk factors for suicide deaths in adolescents. Elucidating the neurobiological patterns that specifically characterize SI and NSSI in adolescents is needed to inform the use of these markers in intervention studies and to develop brain-based treatment targets. Here, we clinically assessed 70 adolescents-49 adolescents with depression and 21 healthy controls-to determine SI and NSSI history. Twenty-eight of the depressed adolescents had a history of SI and 29 had a history of NSSI (20 overlapping). All participants underwent a resting-state fMRI scan. We compared groups in network coherence of subdivisions of the central executive network (CEN), default mode network (DMN), and salience network (SN). We also examined group differences in between-network connectivity and explored brain-behavior correlations. Depressed adolescents with SI and with NSSI had lower coherence in the ventral DMN compared to those without SI or NSSI, respectively, and healthy controls (all ps < 0.043, uncorrected). Depressed adolescents with NSSI had lower coherence in the anterior DMN and in insula-SN (all ps < 0.030, uncorrected), and higher CEN-DMN connectivity compared to those without NSSI and healthy controls (all ps < 0.030, uncorrected). Lower network coherence in all DMN subnetworks and insula-SN were associated with higher past-month SI and NSSI (all ps < 0.001, uncorrected). Thus, in our sample, both SI and NSSI are related to brain networks associated with difficulties in self-referential processing and future planning, while NSSI specifically is related to brain networks associated with disruptions in interoceptive awareness.
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Ho et al. (2021) studied this question.
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